Here's Some Stupid for Lunch: People Really Love the General Lee

In which people fight over the TV.

Here at the Cafe, we have the full cable package and we have noticed that, suddenly, there are a number of channels dedicated to the electric teevee programs of our youth. We loved many of them and I am happy to see them come around again, even though it might bring back to life my long dormant crush on Patty Duke's British cousin. (Don't ask.) But I think some folks are taking these artifacts a little too seriously.

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Golfer Bubba Watson bought the General Lee, the trademark automobile from the old Dukes Of Hazzard show. Watson has announced that he will replace the Gonfalon of Loserdom from the car's roof with the American flag. This has set off some curious palpitations among the patrons of the Cafe.

First up is our old pal Sub Left'nant Blimp who, as Edroso points out, has been given the miseries by Watson's proposed modification.

There is a clear and necessary answer to Watson's rather naïve inquiry, "Why not the American flag?" That answer: Because the General Lee is a piece of America's cultural history, and civilized people do not vandalize their antiques...It is fashionable in our age to seek unity in all things, but the "General Lee" is not a statehouse, responsive to and reflective of the popular will. It is a historical artifact and cultural totem that sums up a particular moment in time. By amending it to suit contemporary fashions Watson is seeking, in effect, to erase that moment from history. This in my view is extraordinarily dangerous...

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The Sub Left'Nant is joined in his sorrow by torture-porn enthusiast Marc Thiessen, who has a gig at the Washington Post because Fred Hiatt has no intellectual standards at all. Thiessen also deplores this attempt to tamper with an iconic pop-culture masterpiece.

The latest example: The TV Land network has pulled the plug on reruns of one of America's most beloved shows, "The Dukes of Hazzard," because the car in the show, the General Lee, bears a Confederate flag. There is nothing racist about "The Dukes of Hazzard." It is a show about moonshine, short shorts and fast cars. What is accomplished by banning "The Dukes of Hazzard"?

These are the people who told the Dixie Chicks to "shut up and sing."

They should be kept away from popular culture for the same reason we keep pesticides away from concession stands.